(Ed. Note: This op-ed is being published in the Baltimore Sun on Thursday, August 26, 2010.)

On Aug. 26, 1920 — 90 years ago today — women became voting citizens of the United States. That was the day the 19th Amendment became law, finally writing women’s suffrage into the Constitution. In remembrance of the occasion, Congress in 1971 designated Aug. 26 as Women’s Equality Day. It’s a name that never fails to provoke a reaction among women I know. “Equality Day?” someone will say, eyebrow raised. “Oh, so we’re equal now?”

Well, are we?

It depends on what you mean by equal. Legally, women in the U.S. have come a long way. The 19th Amendment was the first big breakthrough, though it certainly didn’t spell instant equality. Women were still discriminated against in wages and hiring, barred from many professions, denied credit and loans, and in some states prohibited from making contracts, serving on juries or controlling their own property. But by 1971, those restrictions were falling by the wayside. Through a patchwork of legislative victories and court decisions from the 1960s on, women’s equality under the law was gradually established. It’s still not complete, and the basic principle has still never been enshrined in the Constitution (that would be the late lamented Equal Rights Amendment), but most of the pieces are in place.

Equality isn’t just a question of laws, though. There’s legal equality, and then there’s social equality. For women to have both, we need more than just legal rights. We need a culture that values women’s full range of abilities and recognizes women’s achievements. We need a social environment free of sexist double standards, in which women are routinely celebrated as leaders, thinkers, workers, scientists, artists, and athletes. And in this respect, equality is still far away.

Our daughters know this, even if we adults like to tell ourselves otherwise. During the last presidential campaign, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham was shocked when his 3-year-old daughter informed him that “girls can’t be president.” But the child had made a perfectly rational deduction. She’d seen the portraits: 42 men, zero women. Clearly a trend.

In my own family, a young relative explained to me once that “girls can’t be scientists.” An acquaintance tells a similar story about her daughter playing a game of make-believe “office” with friends. The boys were the bosses and the girls were the secretaries. “Why don’t you be a boss?” the woman asked her daughter. “Girls aren’t bosses,” replied the youngster.

Kids are smart. Job One for little humans is to learn how to be big humans, and to that end children are frighteningly keen observers. We can tell them all day long that men and women are equal, that girls can be anything they want — but that’s not what they see.

Think about what the world looks like from a young girl’s perspective. When she watches TV, she sees that almost all the serious talking heads belong to men and almost all the nearly-naked bodies belong to women. Most of the movies she watches have male protagonists, as do most of the TV shows. She likely lives on a street named after a man, goes to a school named after a man, celebrates holidays named after men, and buys her lunch with money that has only men’s pictures on it. And when her class takes a field trip to the U.S. Capitol, she learns that of the 100 great Americans fit to be honored in National Statuary Hall, all but nine are men.

That’s the stuff we need to change.

If we want our daughters to have a chance at full equality — social as well as legal — we need to create a culture that sends the right messages. We can start by making sure that women’s achievements are depicted and celebrated everywhere: in our media and monuments, our history books and holidays. Statuary Hall is a perfect example. One of the goals of my organization, Equal Visibility Everywhere, is to persuade state lawmakers to contribute more statues of women to the hall. We’ve just gotten sign-off from Kansas for a new statue of Amelia Earhart. Here in Maryland we’re pushing for a statue of Harriet Tubman, the woman who rose from slavery to become “the Moses of her people.”

Forget the old-fashioned argument that men are the ones who made all the history. Women played their part in the American story whether men gave them credit or not. Women led tribes and founded towns, built factories and farms, plotted revolution and preached revival. They chased buffalo across the plains and hacked a living out of the soil. They flew airplanes and threw baseballs, mined gold and milled cotton. They were inventors and artists, poets and philosophers, soldiers and scientists.

And they still are. Women are everything, and it’s time we shaped our cultural messages to reflect that. Only then will we be able to say, “Yes, we’re equal now.”

And EVE has been entrusted with the responsibility for making it happen.

I promised a couple of months ago that we had two very big announcements brewing, both of them related to Amelia Earhart. The first was the parade balloon, which is on schedule for a debut this fall.

The second announcement is this: the Governor of Kansas has just signed off on replacing the statue of John James Ingalls in Statuary Hall with a new statue of Amelia Earhart. EVE is named as the party responsible for raising the money and commissioning the statue.

I’ll just quote our press release:

August 23 — It’s official: Kansas will replace its statue of John James Ingalls in the U.S. Capitol with a new sculpture of famed aviator Amelia Earhart.

Ingalls has represented Kansas for more than a century in the National Statuary Hall Collection, which features two statues of illustrious citizens from each state. Amelia Earhart will become only the tenth woman to be honored with a statue in the collection.

Equal Visibility Everywhere (EVE), a national non-profit dedicated to achieving gender parity in the country’s symbols and icons, has been given responsibility for raising the funds for the statue and commissioning the artist.

…continue reading

Today is the anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote. Following up on a previous conversation, I was pleased to see Google observing the day on its home page:

However, it’s actually another day, August 26, that has been set aside to honor women’s suffrage. The 19th Amendment was ratified on August 18, 1920 (with Tennessee becoming the 36th state to ratify), but the Amendment was officially certified as law a week later, on August 26, 1920. So it was the latter date, August 26, that was designated by Congress in 1971 as Women’s Equality Day.

Yep, that’s right: August 26 every year is officially Women’s Equality Day in the United States. Have you ever seen it observed? Ever? Anywhere? By anybody?

Here at EVE, we think Women’s Equality Day ought to be a federal holiday—day off from work, government offices shut down, sheet sales at Bed Bath & Beyond, the whole bit. But we’re open to other suggestions. What do you think?

Of course, a holiday is more than just a day on the calendar. It needs to be celebrated. People need to actually pay attention to it and do something in honor of the day. For this poll, you can choose more than one option:

Here it is, the artist’s rendering of the new Amelia Earhart balloon:

Bear in mind this thing will be humongous—with a 40-foot wingspan, it will be the same size as the real airplane!

The art has been through several iterations and tweaked in response to feedback from EVE’s 99 Club, and now it’s ready to go. The Earhart Estate has approved the renderings and the engineering crew is ready to start sculpting the clay model. (There are other elevations too, showing the balloon from all angles, but this one gives the best overall view I think.)

Now for the hard sell: if you haven’t already donated to the 99 Club, please consider helping out.
The contributions we’ve received so far have enabled us to make the first payment on the balloon, pay for the parade banner, and pay for the balloon handler suits (they’re going to look like a ground crew in flight suits).

But we still need to raise the rest of the money to cover expenses. …continue reading

We are HUGELY grateful to all the 99 Club members who have helped us raise the funds for the Amelia Earhart balloon. We would be absolutely nowhere without your wonderful generosity. Thanks to you, we have made the down payment on the balloon, hired the artist, ordered and paid for the parade banner, and ordered and paid for the balloon handler costumes.

But we’re still short! So we’re thinking of offering some CafePress items as another way for people to support the Amelia Earhart balloon. The design would say something like, “I helped put Amelia back in the skies!”

What do you think? Which of these items do you think we should offer? You can check off more than one box, or suggest something else in the comments.

I’ve just placed the order for the white jumpsuits the balloon handlers will wear while guiding the Amelia Earhart balloon. We’re going to dress them to look like a ground crew, wearing suits similar to what Amelia herself wore. The costume pictured at right was worn by Hilary Swank in the movie “Amelia.”

Toni McKay at StarBound Entertainment (the balloon company) came up with the brilliant idea of using inexpensive Tyvek-type suits. They’re much cheaper than real jumpsuits and can be easily replaced. We don’t plan to have the balloon handlers roll around in mechanic grease to get that authentic lived-in look, but a little wear and tear won’t hurt. We’re also going to put stickers on the suits that say “A.E.,” though probably we’ll put them on the front rather than the back (for a variety of reasons).

We could have gone with custom t-shirts, the way a lot of balloon sponsors do, but we think the “flight suits” are much better. And cheaper!

P.S. Watch the slide show on our Amelia balloon page to see several pictures of balloon handlers in action.

The sketches for our new Amelia Earhart balloon are in—and they’re gorgeous! We sent our 99 Club members the first view earlier this week and got some great feedback. The artist made a couple of tweaks based on their comments, and now the final versions are ready.

Here’s the birdseye view:

Yes, we’re being sneaky—don’t you want to see Amelia’s face? But we’re holding on to the other elevations and detail drawings until our 99 Club members can see them first.

The next step is for the designers and engineers at StarBound Entertainment (the balloon makers) to create a clay model of the balloon. We’re shooting for a test flight in a Labor Day parade, with a big-venue major debut for Thanksgiving. Our volunteer staff at EVE is busy getting the parade banner designed, ordering the flight suits for the “ground crew” (the balloon handlers who guide the balloon in the parade), and doing a thousand other things.

But we still need to raise the rest of the cash!

We already have 52 members of the 99 Club, and we’re looking for 47 more. The clock is ticking and the calendar pages are flipping. We need to pay the artist, pay for the balloon, pay for the parade banner, pay for the flight suits—pay, pay, pay!

Please join the 99 Club today and invite all of your friends to do the same. And remember—your contribution is tax-deductible.

We’re almost there!

The other day I noted the lack of females in the new Sunday Funnies stamps from the Post Office.

One of our volunteers, Nancy Foye-Cox, was inspired to compile a list of comic strips either featuring females or created by females—just to show what the Post Office is missing. I’ve plugged in her data below.

It’s not like these are obscure comic strips running in alternative feminist weeklies. Blondie, for example, is the most widely distributed comic of all time (yes, really—ahead of Peanuts, Garfield, and all the others). Cathy Guisewite (Cathy) and Lynn Johnston (For Better or For Worse) are both Reuben winners. The iconic Little Orphan Annie became a Broadway show and a movie. Luann is a contemporary favorite.

COMIC STRIPS NAMED FOR FEMALE CHARACTERS

• APPLE MARY by Martha Orr (1930s) (became MARY WORTH)
• BLONDIE by Chic Young (1930)
• BRENDA STARR by Dale Messick: first cartoon strip written by a woman (1940). NOTE: After Messick left, strip continued by other female artists.
• CATHY by Cathy Guisewite
• DASHING DOT by Marjorie Henderson Buell
• FRITZI RITZ by Larry Whittington (1922) (became NANCY strip)
• GAY AND HER GANG by Gladys Parker
• GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES and BABS IN SOCIETY by Virginia Huget
• LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE by Harold Gray (1924)
• LITTLE LULU by Marjorie “Marje” Henderson Buell (1935)
• LUANN by Greg Evans (1985)
• MARIANNE by Ethel Hays
• MARY WORTH by Dale Conner (who left the strip)
• MAXINE or LAUGHING GAS by Marian Henley
• MISS FURY by Tarpe Mills (1941)
• NANCY by Ernie Bushmiller (1938)
• SUSIE Q. SMITH by Linda and Jerry Walter
• TEENA by Hilda Terry (1941). NOTE: first female cartoonist to be accepted to the National Cartoonists Society.
• THE KEWPIES by Rose O’Neill (1909)
• TORCHY BROWN by Jackie Ormes, first Black female comic strip cartoonist (1937)
• TOODLES, DIMPLES, DOLLIE DINGLE, and DOTTIE DARLING and the CAMPBELL (SOUP) KIDS by Grace Wiederseim AKA Drayton AKA Gebbie
• WAY LAY or STORY MINUTE by Carol Lay

SYNDICATED COMIC STRIPS BY FEMALE CARTOONISTS

• APPLE MARY by Martha Orr (1930s) (became MARY WORTH)
• BOBBY SOX by Marty Links (1944)
• BRENDA STARR by Dale Messick: first cartoon strip written by a woman (1940). NOTE: After Messick left, strip continued by other female artists.
• CAP STUBBS AND TIPPIE by Edwina Dumm (1918)
• CATHY by Cathy Guisewite
• DASHING DOT by Marjorie Henderson Buell
• FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE by Lynn Johnston
• GAY AND HER GANG by Gladys Parker
• GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES and BABS IN SOCIETY by Virginia Huget
• LITTLE LULU by Marjorie “Marje” Henderson Buell (1935)
• MARIANNE by Ethel Hays
• MARY WORTH by Dale Conner (who left the strip)
• MAXINE or LAUGHING GAS by Marian Henley
• MISS FURY by Tarpe Mills (1941)
• SUSIE Q. SMITH by Linda and Jerry Walter
• TEENA by Hilda Terry (1941). NOTE: first female cartoonist to be accepted to the National Cartoonists Society.
• THE KEWPIES by Rose O’Neill (1909)
• TORCHY BROWN by Jackie Ormes, first Black female comic strip cartoonist (1937)
• TOODLES, DIMPLES, DOLLIE DINGLE, and DOTTIE DARLING and the CAMPBELL (SOUP) KIDS by Grace Wiederseim AKA Drayton AKA Gebbie
• WAY LAY or STORY MINUTE by Carol Lay

Visitors to our website the past few days have seen the wonderful new video about us right on the front page. If you haven’t watched it yet, check it out.

The video came as a total surprise to us: we had no idea Judge Susan Block (she’s retired from the Circuit Court) was recording this commentary for KSDK in St. Louis. She’s a regular commentator for the station, and was turned on to EVE by the fabulous feminist playwright Joan Lipkin, also in St. Louis.

Huge thanks to both Susan and Joan for this labor of love. And hello, St. Louis!

Earlier this month I came across Shelby Knox’s post on how Google Doodles (you know what those are, right?) manage to almost entirely ignore women. I thought at the time, “oh wow, we have got to pull this together with our EVE stuff.”

And now we have. Or rather, Shelby Knox has, in this wonderful post about Google Doodles, Amelia Earhart, and EVE:

…continue reading

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